The impact of climate change, infrastructure projects and increased population means that 2 billion people around the world are expected to be vulnerable to flood disaster by 2050. While addressing the causes of flooding is essential, it is also imperative to improve flood resilience in the most affected areas, with people’s lives and livelihoods increasingly threatened by intense and unpredictable weather events.

Through containment, adapting to live with the virus and last but not least the vaccine rollout, it is now possible to envisage a sense of normality in the global economy. With this perspective, Expo 2020 Dubai is set to be the first event of its scale to take place, serving to re-kickstart the global meetings, incentives, conferencing and exhibitions (MICE) industry as well as international tourism.

Education is perhaps the most effective way to pull children out of poverty and addressing social problems, yet 260 million children around the world are out of school. This is why a group of concerned citizens in Pakistan created The Citizens Foundation (TCF), a non-government organisation aimed at improving access to education as a way of reducing social barriers and making students become agents of positive change.

Climate change, unsustainable farming practices and deforestation not only pose serious challenges for biodiversity and the protection of nature, but in many places also threaten the livelihoods of indigenous communities.

Only about 0.007 per cent of the planet’s water is available for human consumption, with the vast majority of water – in frozen glaciers or seawater – of no use for drinking, cooking, bathing or cleaning. Furthermore, the scarcity of freshwater is exacerbated by polluted rivers, lakes and groundwater, and the depletion of these water sources in many populated areas.